Previous
Symbols
Throughout Untouchable, English clothing symbolizes the way Bakha and his friends have internalized their village’s hierarchies of race and class. Sweeper Bakha, his brother Rakha, and his best friends Ram Charan and Chota are fascinated by English materials, hats, and cigarettes. Bakha spends almost all of his income on imported blankets and pants, even though they fail to keep him warm in the winter; Ram Charan wears a sunhat and shorts to his sister’s wedding simply because he imagines that even casual British “fashun” is inherently more formal than traditional Indian dress. But while the boys all mock each other for their shared obsession with such “fashun,” this focus on appearance flows naturally from the rigid caste delineations they have grown up with. To signal his low status, Bakha must wear khaki while the rest of his neighbors wear white and higher-caste villagers wear special robes to denote their position as leaders or upper-crust Brahmin priests. And, since the narrative takes place 10 years before India’s independence movement succeeded, a British officer’s uniform holds almost infinite sartorial power and prominence. It follows, then, that Bakha and his friends’ desire to wear European sunhats (known as “topees”) and smoke “Red Lamp” cigarettes is far more than an aesthetic longing. It is instead a natural response to caste and colonialism—though they are forced to the bottom of overlapping race and class hierarchies, dressing in starched pants and jackets allows Bakha and his friends to blur visually the categories they otherwise cannot change.
English Clothes Quotes in Untouchable
The Untouchable quotes below all refer to the symbol of English Clothes. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Pages 3–43
Quotes
[Bakha] had had glimpses, during his sojourn there, of the life the Tommies lived, sleeping on strange, low canvas beds covered tightly with blankets, eating eggs, drinking tea and wine in tin mugs, going to parade and then walking down to the bazaar with cigarettes in their mouths and small silver-mounted canes in their hands. And he had soon become possessed with an overwhelming desire to live their life. He had been told they were sahibs, superior people. He had felt that to put on their clothes made one a sahib too. So he tried to copy them in everything, to copy them as well as he could in the exigencies of his peculiarly Indian circumstances.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 43–73
Quotes
As a child, Bakha had often expressed a desire to wear rings on his fingers, and liked to look at his mother adorned with silver ornaments. Now that he had been to the British barracks and known that the English didn’t like jewelry, he was full of disgust for the florid, minutely-studded designs of the native ornaments. So he walked along without noticing the big earrings and nose-rings and hair-flowers and other gold-plated ornaments which shone out from the background of green paper against which the smiths had ingeniously set them.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 73–105
Quotes
There wasn’t a child about the 38th Dogras who hadn't cast lingering eyes at this hat. The spirit of modernity had worked havoc among the youth of the regiment. The consciousness of every child was full of a desire to wear Western dress, and since most of the boys about the place were the sons of babus, bandsmen, sea poise, sweepers, washermen and shopkeepers, all too poor to afford the luxury of a complete European outfit, they eagerly stretched their hands to seize any particular article they could see anywhere, feeling that the possession of something European was better than the possession of nothing European.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Pages 105–139
Quotes
‘Yes, Sahib, I know,’ said Bakha, without understanding the subtle distinction which the Colonel was trying to institute between himself and the ordinary sahibs in India whose haughtiness and vulgarity was, to his Christian mind, shameful, and from whom, on that account, he took care to distinguish himself, lest their misdeeds reflect on the sincerity of his intentions for the welfare of the souls of the heathen. To Bakha, however, all the sahibs were sahibs, trousered and hatted men, who were generous in the extreme, giving away their cast-off clothes to their servants, also a bit nasty because they abused their servants a great deal.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Bakha saw a sallow-faced Englishman, whom he knew to be the District Superintendent of Police, standing by the roadside in a khaki uniform of breaches, polished leather gators and blue-puggareed, khaki sun helmet, not as smart as the military officers’, but, of course, possessing for Bakha all the qualities of the sahibs’ clothes. Somehow, however, at this moment Bakha was not interested in sahibs, probably because in the midst of this enormous crowd of Indians, fired with enthusiasm for their leader, the foreigners seemed out of place, insignificant, the representative of an order which seemed to have nothing to do with the natives.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Untouchable LitChart as a printable PDF.
English Clothes Symbol Timeline in Untouchable
The timeline below shows where the symbol English Clothes appears in Untouchable. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Pages 3–43
...some English items as charity from Tommies and sepoys, but the rest of the English clothes and objects he covets he can only purchase at the rag-store. Though Bakha often admires...
(full context)
...there is nothing else English about him, it gives Bakha great pride to wear these European garments . At this moment, however, he is freezing, so he resolves to buy another blanket...
(full context)
...because her own life was so far from his modern world of cigarettes and English clothes. He goes to the latrines, shocked by how cold and congested he feels. A small,...
(full context)
...they will make fun of him as they always do, teasing him for his English clothes even though they wear same ones. In return, Bakha makes fun of Ram Charan for...
(full context)
Pages 43–73
...both with a sense of childlike wonder and a hatred for his own cramped quarters. English dress , to Bakha, represents a “new world” of his own making, allowing him to be...
(full context)
Pages 73–105
Chota calls to Ram Charan, who is wearing a ridiculous combination of English clothing : a large topee (sunhat) and shorts. At first, Ram Charan is too lost in...
(full context)
...modernity had worked havoc” on nearly everyone in Bulashah, and nothing signifies “modernity” like European clothes.
(full context)
...a little kid. But then he stops himself short, feeling strange about his obsession with English clothing . Bakha heads to the Havildar’s quarters, trying to shake off his feelings of embarrassment....
(full context)
Pages 105–139
...intimately, while other members of the crowd, inspired by Gandhi’s words, rally to burn their British clothing or show newfound tenderness to each other.
(full context)
...soda water. Bakha takes in the man: he is Muslim and dressed in a beautiful English suit . Bakha cannot tell if the man is Indian or British.
(full context)
...accusing Bashir of copying everything from the British, from his philosophical ideas to his English clothes. As Bashir gets more and more irritated, Sarshar continues, positing that everyone is basically equal...
(full context)
...relieve him of this labor. Bakha wonders if he will ever get to wear sahib clothes. But then the image of the British guard at Gandhi’s speech pops into his head,...
(full context)
